Weird coral spread

[whippetguy]

I received an SPS coral last winter at one of our local club meetings. It was advertised as a cat's paw but honestly, our meeting frags aren't always correctly identified. The interesting thing is that I'm starting to have small areas of what appear to be this coral popping up in a handful of spots in my tank for the past couple of months. My question is: Does this happen? I've had my live rock in my tank for almost 2 years with nothing like this showing up before. The first photo is the main colony followed by a spot growing on live rock and one on a live clam shell. There are a couple of other spots of it on a powerhead cord and more live rock. Don't get me wrong, I'd be more than happy with it spreading since it has a pretty yellow/green hue under daylights and great flourescence under my evening blue LEDs. Any thoughts?

 

[Oxylebius]

Do you by any chance think it reproduced (sexual, not asexual) in your tank? Was fertilized before you got it, released larvae that settled out in other locations? Stylo larvae in the wild are known to settle out (right away and on anything) and grow, including on floating items on the oceans surface.

 

[whippetguy]

That's my best guess, was that it was fertilized and released larval stage when it hit my tank. It's kind of neat to have new good coral growing from scratch so to speak.

Thanks for replying.

 

[Mike Johnson]

Very cool. You guys are right except the fertilization part. Pocilloporids (Stylophora) will planulate in aquaria and produce more divisions if allowed to reach a critical mass; size and sexual maturity.

Other corals do this as well and is a good reason to let it grow instead of fragging them.